It wasn't a very long time ago that Paul Ranger was one of the up-and-coming defencemen in the NHL. In looking back through the archives, Ranger was a core piece on a good-looking young defensive unit, and Tortorella apparently said he had one of the best first passes in the NHL at 23.

In 2008, Ranger played 72 games. The next year, 42, and the season after it was just 8, and he left the team due to "personal reasons", returning for tax information in 2010. Then-Lightning coach Rick Tocchet noted that Ranger appeared to have been working out.

Not just his surface numbers look strong, but so do his underlying puck possession number. His Corsi numbers look pretty strong, and it's also worth noting his overall Corsi score (Corsi ON/60) in both years is a positive number despite no other regular Lightning defenceman who can say the same. Here are his Behind the Net numbers along with his team ranking out of 6 defencemen:

Relative Corsi

Ozone%

Rel QoC

2007-08

9.3 (1)

53.6% (6)

0.778 (2)

2008-09

7.5 (1)

45.7% (2)

0.595 (2)

There are some gripes about using Rel QoC as a quality of competition metric, but laid down in an era when coaches did not do a lot of zone-start matching, it's probably indicative of the trust that Tortorella, and then Barry Melrose and Tocchet, placed in the young defenceman as a player.

The concussion listed on 2005/10/26 is quite memorable. Ranger was sidelined by Eric Boulton of the Atlanta Thrashers in one of those "isn't the goon supposed to be protecting the players?" moments. Here's an oddly subdued 2005 version of Jay Onrait with the news:

Perhaps after a hiatus, Ranger rekindled a love for the game. If the rumours are to be true, and we're certainly not the only outlet reporting that Ranger has signed with the Leafs farm team, and this is announced later in the month, Toronto bought for pennies on the dollar an extremely capable puck-moving defenceman.

Maybe he wanted to be nearer to his hometown, maybe he only sees himself as an AHLer, but he's a player you'd have to cheer for if he suited up in blue and white whether it has a Marlies or a Leafs logo on the front.

UPDATE - And now...

Paul Ranger is working out with some of his new Marlies teammates this morning. 2nd day training since signing #Marlies#Leafs